Alsa Ventures is targeting a $150m final close for its inaugural biotherapeutics fund, which has already backed university-linked companies.
UK-based venture capital firm Alsa Ventures has raised an initial $59m for a biotech fund aimed at Europe-based companies including spinouts.
The fund has secured commitments from unnamed strategic investors and anticipates to reach a final close of $150m. Alsa did not respond to GUV’s request for further details.
Founded in 2019, Alsa Ventures targets early-stage biomedical projects across a range of therapeutic classes in the hope of tackling ailments with unmet medical needs.
The firm had already made three investments, ranging from discovery-stage through to the latter phases of preclinical development. All three will now be passed onto the management of Alsa’s new fund.
One of the trio is Montis Biosciences, a cancer therapy spinout of KU Leuven and Flanders Institute for Biotechnology. Alsa Ventures backed a $9.1m seed round for the business in February 2020.
The fund will also assume control of Alsa Ventures’ stake in Epsilogen, a cancer treatment company partly based on research from King’s College London and research charity Cancer Research UK.
The other portfolio company is Oxford Biotherapeutics, a cancer immunotherapy developer with origins in University of Oxford research.
Alek Safarian, founding CEO of Alsa Ventures, said: “We see tremendous opportunity across the European biotech space.
“Our London-based team comes with it a great deal of industry experience, and we aim to leverage this where possible, by helping preclinical biotechs accelerate their R&D into the clinic.”
